Ready-to-eat (“R-T-E” or “RTE”) breakfast cereals are popular packaged food items. R-T-E cereals exist in a large number of different varieties and can be grouped into different categories including puffed and unpuffed cereals, cereals based on particular types of grains, pre-sweetened cereals, and non-pre-sweetened cereals. RTE cereal are often described in terms of shapes such as flakes, shreds, biscuits, squares, puffs, granola cereals, etc. RTE cereals are often described in terms of the principle cereal ingredient from which they are prepared, e.g., wheat, rice, corn, oats, or other major cereal grains. Other categorizations include puffed or unpuffed; whole grain or not; made from whole kernel pieces or from cooked cereal doughs; organic or not; pre-sweetened or not; etc.
The present description is directed toward sugar-coated food products, and is particularly directed toward pre-sweetened RTE cereals of various shapes, compositions, etc. Often, pre-sweetened cereal products include a coating (sugar coating) usually including a nutritive carbohydrate sweetener such as sucrose, corn syrup or another sugar syrup, fructose, etc. Conventionally, pre-sweetened breakfast cereals have been prepared by first producing unsweetened cereal pieces; coating the cereal pieces with an aqueous slurry (or solution or syrups) of sweeteners; and then drying the coated pieces in an oven or air current to remove the moisture added by the syrup application.
Pre-sweetener coatings (i.e., “sugar coatings”) typically contain sucrose as the principal ingredient. However, because corn syrup and other non-sucrose sugar syrups are often (depending, for example, upon commodity pricing) less expensive than sucrose, packaged food manufacturers of pre-sweetened cereal products replace or substitute at least a portion of the relatively more expensive sucrose with a less expensive sweetening carbohydrate or sugar such as corn syrup or corn syrup solids, or another carbohydrate such as a soluble fiber. While advantageous from a cost standpoint, reducing the amount of sucrose in a coating to reduce cost can result in a trade-off in terms of other properties of the coating or coated food product. As the amount of sucrose in a sugar coating decreases and the level of a non-sucrose substitute such as corn syrup increases, the sugar coating becomes less crystalline, more sticky, and more hygroscopic.
Stickiness is undesirable in commercial breakfast cereal production. Sticky products can be difficult to handle in commercial plant operations. Excessively sticky cereal pieces can tend to stick together during processing and upon packaging. Great efforts are made to separate instances of two or more cereal pieces stuck together. Also, cereal pieces with lower relative amounts of sucrose and higher relative amounts of non-sucrose sugars are more hygroscopic and can tend to suffer from undesirable moisture absorption over time, especially after opening a cereal bag, leading to an undesirably sticky product after opening. Consequently, the amount of corn syrup or other non-sucrose sugar syrup typically used as a substitute for sucrose in a sugar coating of a pre-sweetened cereal has generally been limited to about one part by weight sugar syrup in five parts by weight sugar coating. That is, previous sugar coatings generally contain at least about 80 weight percent sucrose (dry weight), or more, with 20 weight percent or less corn syrup or other non-sucrose soluble solids.
Current consumer trends favor “reduced sugar” cereal products, which for practical purposes can often mean cereal products having a relatively reduced amount of sucrose. Cereal products that contain a relatively lower amount of sugar can be prepared, in one simple technique, by reducing the amount of sugar coating applied to the cereal base. Typically in a pre-sweetened breakfast cereal the weight ratio of sugar coating to base is about 1:1. Low coverage RTE cereal products have also been described, e.g., having as low as one part sugar coating to 10 parts cereal base. A reduction in the amount of sugar coating, however, comes at the expense of other desirable cereal product attributes. For example, as the amount of sugar coating is reduced, sweetness perception is reduced. Also, the bowl life of a cereal product in cold milk can be unacceptably reduced. The eating quality or texture of the product can be affected and can exhibit less crunch or “bite” than high sucrose pre-sweetened products.
Another approach to reducing the sucrose level of a pre-sweetened RTE cereal product is to add a reduced calorie bulking agent such as polydextrose or sugar alcohols to the sugar coating. While useful, polydextrose and sugar alcohols are several times more expensive than sucrose and some materials can have an undesirable laxative effect especially in more sensitive individuals such as children.
There is ongoing interest in the breakfast cereal industry in reducing the sugar (typically sucrose) content of pre-sweetened breakfast cereals, while maintaining the benefits and eating qualities of conventional high sucrose level cereal products. Pre-sweetened cereal products with reduced levels of sugar would desirably exhibit efficient processing, desired texture, flavor (sweetness), bowl life, and other eating qualities, and visual appearance, at least comparable to previous pre-sweetened cereal products containing standard or reduced levels of sucrose.